


A Year Without Light

by oneBBurl



Category: Daytrippers
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Gay, M/M, Vampires
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-19
Updated: 2019-12-23
Packaged: 2020-10-24 08:42:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20703137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oneBBurl/pseuds/oneBBurl
Summary: Gustave (Gus), a lonely vampire living in a mountain castle, meets Tristin (Tristan) as an ailing human and offers him a lifetime of servitude in return for blood.





	1. Chapter 1

The village of Sans-Lumiere, so named for its unforgivingly chilly and overcast conditions, sits at the gentle incline of the French southern coast, acrobatically bridging and snaking its structures along the path of a river splitting the land inward. This split fractures what would be a perfect, crescent-like arc of the bay where traders come to harbor, often trading jokes about the uncannily rib-shaped "côte de la côte."

With the clockwork arrival of late-afternoon sailing traders & visitors blooms a lively evening market, candle-lit lamps flooding the windows bright, flickering orange against the purpling hills, shouting a promise of warm food, bed, or company. A rhythm overtakes the hillside as the sound of sandals on stone clatters between the encroaching din of conversation. For the span of the evening, the periphery is filled to the brim with sensory information as sweet-smelling foods and heavy burlap sacks jump between hands. Then, as the sun sets over the hills, the rhythm slowly folds itself away as the superstition of nightfall takes hold.

Sans-Lumiere has plenty to be anxious about. For one, the sea is temperamental -- some years bring high tides that sweep entire harvests out to sea. Other seasons bring storms torrential enough to level homes and sweep away roofs like tissue. In spite of this, the most difficult and, by the opinion of the inhabitants, bothersome aspect of Sans-Lumiere is the sharp peak of a slowly crumbling mountain crested by a tall, decrepit, abandoned castle that looms over the town.

The historic castle, it's spindly towers the fingers atop a long throwing-arm arc of the steep mountainside, reflects the utilitarian tastes of its long-dead creators, hearkening a more heartlessly inhospitable era. Due to the near-absolute degradation of the trail swirling up the incline to the castle entrance, no human is able to enter or, as is presumed by the townspeople, exit. Well, of course, there is the occasional spoken report of a flickering light in the highest window of the castle, but that can be accounted for as a reflection of the stars or the moon!

And, of course, there is the youthful Tristin, seen many times as a child bounding from a ridge twice his height and tumbling in the sand, only to pat the dirt out of his pitch-black hair, climb right back up and do it again. Tristin, once found after a brief panic-inducing absence from first-year classes sitting atop the roof of his own home, his silent skipping of pebbles across the intricate stonework parapets providing no clues on how he got up there. One could believe that in his early adulthood, puttering house-to-house as busybody courier, bounding over streams and braving storms on a slippery hillside, Tristin would be the most likely candidate of Sans-Lumiere to reach the curious castle summit and investigate the strange, alluring light, the whispered echoes of music, the feeling of eyes ever-open peering down from high vantage in the night sky.

Something about his way of righting himself after spills like a housecat made Tristin and his battered messenger bag a heavily relied-upon resource, darting from corner to corner of the small town towing nearly his weight in post, produce and knick-knacks. His most honored duties were passed along by the town’s wiry-haired elders, such as bright Madame Toussant, sliding her still-life drawings and notes to her grandchildren into the crook of Tristin’s arm as he bounds past, or the curt Madame Fournier, pawing coins from a table into her cupped hands to pay for food and limply, shakily decreeing hissed would-be-revocations of local policy for Tristin to make-believe at passing along.

He has always found this to be worthy work. For him, the quieting rhythms of familiarity and belonging more than soothe the anxieties of being. His work is hard, but it is also simple and dutiful, and he has always appreciated the rambling by of wandering thoughts as he watches his feet arc over flying cobblestone. He would always feel a symbiosis with his surroundings, a providing circulatory cell in the throes of a living system breathing in the sun, in the ships and harvest, out the night and the cool. He was a part of that bounty, an ant in the harvest, selflessly passing meals and correspondence down the proverbial table. But it was his body that was always needed, worked by the years into a sharp instrument, never his mind or heart which lay in a stupefying stasis.

A biting chill hitting the sweat-covered back of his neck, the inching of the hillside’s shadow up the church belltower -- Moments like these are Tristin’s frame of reference for telling time. Today, that chill hits his neck sooner than yesterday, and he springs into a hustling leap. The dipping sun hastens him, but there’s no room in his mind for panic or on his body for a single drop of sweat further. So is how it goes in Sans-Lumiere: an unflinching, unquestioning ethic of work and fulfillment, honor given to both the commotion and the nighttime licking of wounds in candle-lit homes. And there, always, the castle on the mount, a grand, floating gnomon ticking away time as its shadow sweeps across the village. This, too, was how Tristin told time.

“Shadow on the dock,” speaks up a hunching Monsieur Clouthier, shoving a basket of picked radishes off his shoulder and pointing to the water, then glancing at the sky. “‘Zit been good today?” Tristin, glancing over to the bay, notices the mountain’s shadow encroaching.

Monsieur Clouthier has lived close to Tristin for his entire life, now the sole surviving tenant to the modest Clouthier farm, his coveralls seasoned by their permanent fixture of loose sheep’s wool. He works steadily, but slowly now, and wears years on his bowed spine.

Parents up and leaving their child in Sans-Lumiere is no tragedy in much the same way that an animal may eat its young to preserve the pack. So it goes, and the system doesn’t bend and buckle to feed hungry mouths. Yet for Tristin, Clouthier stands distinguished from the other townspeople for his charity in the months during school where Tristin suddenly found himself alone.

“It has,” Tristin barks back automatically after peering at the sky, clouds on the horizon forming mountainous impressions.

“Quite so,” Clouthier agrees. “‘Though morning chill’s startin’ to bite at the reeds ‘round this time of year. ‘Ll be down to Rue’s to pick out tea leaves before bed I’m sure,”

“No need. I’ll leave them on the stoop,” Tristin offers unthinkingly before springing back onto his route.

* * *

Tristin peers downward under the night sky, watching himself graze the toe of his shoe along the grass with each step. While it would be hard to justify lamenting every trampled weed, he does find himself caught up in the idea of pushing stalks out of the way with a consistent & gentle gait, tip-toeing like a pointe dancer through these fields, leaving behind nothing and destroying nothing.

He loves this land, in a way. It has always reached up to provide for him, sweeping away his insecurities sometimes just as quickly as it introduced them. But living with the land here is a perpetual lover’s quarrel, the cold grip of a hungry world wringing its needs into the soil, loosening only on those who give more than they can carry. Today might have been the last of the year’s sunny days -- fewer than ever -- and even through Sans-Lumiere’s sacred rhythms there reverberated the rare grumbling of complaint, upturned eyes gulping the last of the season’s blues, purples, pinks and oranges.

Tristin gently sets the tin of tea leaves for Clouthier on the stone stoop of his front garden with a dull, gritty thud and turns around to make his way home. The air is damp and cool, the faint smell of metal hanging under the clouds. Listening to the crunch of dried weeds underfoot, he finds his eyes drawn up to the castle, the flicker of a faint light dancing against the sky.

It was a brisk winter morning when Tristin woke up without parents. No note, no one left behind to care for the child; just gone in the night. He remembers circling the property in a haze, calling for them between the crumbling wooden sheds of the hillside. He remembers asking Clouthier for work before ever telling him about the disappearance. He does not, curiously, remember how he felt that morning, whether he had despaired and wept or simply picked up and kept moving. There was never any crime to report and no one to report it. Only the gossip of a fearful town whispering news of the latest misfortune, croons of “the poor boy” falling just short of Tristin’s ears. And there at the top of the mountain, a distant point promising connection to an unknown, a presence too glaring to view directly but too overwhelming to ignore.

Tristin’s footfalls cease. The flickering above is small, near impossible to pick out from the spread of night’s constellations. But it is just enough to give the impression of a candle in the highest window.

He thinks back on bounding across exposed tree roots, feet sinking into the sandy incline of an erosion-carved embankment bisecting a tall ridge, mindlessly sinking his fingers into the dirt to keep hold in his climb to the top. He remembers vaulting his weight over a tree branch to pick the last orange of the season. With the full moon pillowing out through the clouds, he can see, with no uncertainty, a way up, through the steep incline, through the crumbling path, up, all the way up to the light, and he can feel himself vaulting his full weight over the windowsill, feeling the warmth of that candle, finding the source of that life.

* * *

Tristin prides on using his swiftness to get a task behind him before he can give it a genuine thought. So is the way he finds himself gripping an exposed root, carefully and quickly finding new footholds on the seemingly vertical face of the incline.

The mountain path is all stone and sweaty moss, a rare slippery terrain for someone so composed. Worse, yet, is the foreboding rumbling among the clouds and the growing thickness of the air around Tristin. Yet he’s now somehow closer to the summit than to any safety at the bottom of this hill. He unthinkingly leans forward, lurching his weight up the steepening climb, finding handholds among the eroded cobblestone.

The rain here begins very suddenly -- a single drop can portend the near immediate drenching of the area. Tristin knows the droplets hitting his back promise this cavalry, vaulting even quicker between the scattered stonework, the acute angle of the incline now morphing into a near vertical stone castle face. The knots in his stomach tighten as he creeps his fingers into the cracks in the brickwork, gingerly climbing straight upward as the caked dirt and shreds of dried leaves trapped between welcome themselves under his fingernails. He pays no heed to the surface becoming slicker with the oncoming downpour. His mind steels itself to a singular track leading up to this dancing, mesmerizing light, no longer any world below for him to go back to.

Tristin has worked dutifully for the town, never complaining when his muscles ached and weakened. Here was how he found himself at the near-summit of a vertical face, the pains of the workday finally settling on him at the hour he might usually be devoting to rest. Here was how he found himself blearily clawing upward against the strain of nature pushing him to his place like a forceful tide, climbing directly against the odds of the inundating gales. Here was how he found his grip slipping suddenly.  
Laying on an outcropping, Tristin turns his head away from the looming castle to watch the blood pooling around his body, mixing in with the rain and the mud. He doesn’t feel pain or despair, only an overwhelming desire for sleep.

* * *

Gustave has never been confronted with anything like this before.

Firstly, there’s the blood. It grabs hold of his attention from afar. He could smell it from the top of the sky, impossible to ignore. Close up, the wide pool around Tristin’s body nearly bowls him over.

Secondly, there’s the whole scene, a darkly comic thing for Gustave to observe. A modest townsperson really attempting to scale the castle! He had always made sure that even in the best of weather conditions the task would remain impossible, but this was a night of intense thunder and rains strong enough to beat down on the homes in the village with terrible force. To him it seems a glaring affront, a boldness that can’t be overlooked. He can’t help the curling of his lips into a smile as he kneels over the body of the spry young man.

There was a third thing Gustave noticed before sweeping the limp form into his arms to bound up the castle face several floors in each step. A truth that he shelved inside of himself, hardly acknowledged and far from admitted, even in his own internal voice. He noticed that Tristin, for a weak, dying human, was very beautiful.

* * *

Hi Saaaaaam :D

OK let me just say I’m really really sorry about this, this is so much effort to go through for an inside joke. But like the idea of doing m/m fanfic for a show as ridiculous as Daytrippers is just...I couldn’t get that conversation out of my head afterward, lmao. Look I just think Gus and Tristan are cute for each other even though they both suck gfsdgfsaff ALSO I’m really glad you like the penpal idea! ^_^ It feels kinda weird because I know we’re gonna be going to the same academy like...REALLY SOON (aaaaa so excitedddd) but like it makes sense since the whole writing thing is how we’ve been friends for so long.

Anyway yaaa it rules that we both got accepted. I don’t know too much about the type of coursework I’m gonna be put on but I think I have a good idea. It’s gonna be a lot of responsibility either way which is...good and bad T.T I like being busy but I wanna be lazy LOL!!!!!! Do you know what classes you’re planning on taking yet?

I know I already said this but it was nice to see you at orientation! I’m glad that you wanted to hang out because I didn’t know anybody else in the room at all and everyone else already seemed to have their friends and advisors picked out…..so awkward O_O anyway yeah once we have classes we should make that sushi place our spot because ohmygodsogood.

AAAALRIGHT I should probably sign off here I’ve written more than enough XD but I’m legitimately really excited to see how you continue this!! It’ll be good for us to kinda stretch our writing legs before we get super busy with classes and life stuff!

Talk to you sooooon! ☆  
Val


	2. Chapter 2

Tristin awakens slowly, like a bandage being unraveled. The first thing he notices is that he is warm, staring upward at swirling rafters with stonecarved snaking designs etched down the length. Ornamental spikes lined up in formations like poisonous animal spines jut downward threateningly, unwitting branches for a peppering of cobwebs.

Through tall grated windows, he’s able to see the night sky, swirling with purple clouds. Stone columns shoot downward from the bowed arches of the windowsill to meet a white marble floor reflecting errant freestanding metal-cast candelabras. From what little of the darkened hall Tristin can see, he can recognize a bevy of empty bedframes across and to the side of him, neatly lining the wall. Most are rusted over, empty, or askew — aside from the one he finds himself laying in.

Tristin examines his bedsheets under the dim light of the candelabra. The bed he’s laying in is clean and fastidiously made, with him placed neatly on his back at its center. Moving his arm down the soft wool surface, he feels a slight pressure at his elbow and notices a clear tube siphoning a dark, viscous-looking liquid into his vein from a hanging glass jar.

He spends a long while just laying there, listening to intermittent rain tapping against the window. He peers into the shadows, adjusting and readjusting his eyes to try to get a sense of his surroundings. Looking finally back down at himself, he can see the lump of his body under the blankets in what seems to be one piece. 

Without thought, he pulls a bundled armful of blanket to his face and sniffs deeply. He detects a definite but not overpowering mustiness that he expects to find, but underneath there’s something earthy and savory that he can’t place. He wracks his brain’s library of smells and tastes, images of hands pulling roots from the ground flashing in his mind.

Tristin slowly pushes the sheets away, his legs finally touching the open air. Wrapped around his left lower leg in perfect spirals, he spots layers of heavy bandaging supported by two metal stints. Around his waist, a soft & tightly bound cloth woven with lightweight & intricate golden metalworks compresses his body into its usual shape. He prods at it questioningly until a dull pain thudding through his torso dissuades him. Sighing, he swings his legs out over the side of the bed to touch the cold marble below, feeling a punishing sting shoot through his left side as he does.

He wraps an open hand around the cold metal rod hoisting the container of dark liquid and steadies himself, preparing to lurch his weight forward to stand. The stinging sensation courses through his body as he slowly uprights himself, his own stilted groan echoing back at him from the expanse of the hall.

* * *

Tufts of dark hair atop Tristin’s head sift errant pattering raindrops between them like a forest canopy as he breathes in the brisk night from a tall castle outcropping. Steadying himself on a railing, he peers down over Sans-Lumiere’s night-darkened shapes. The sacredness of seeing such a place from above, letting his eyes trail up and down the curving paths that have worn themselves almost physically into his bones, nearly sweeps his feet from under him in an uncannily overwhelming sense of both joy and fear. The unlikely luxury of witnessing what has always been there and the ritualistic portention of carving its truths into his memory as an altar in memoriam to the blindly visceral portrait of the town he had relied on — both are far from lost on him. This vision of the town, its bare truth laid out in diorama, threatens so viciously to upend his attachment to the sensual memory of Sans-Lumiere that he imagines, absurdly, shutting his eyes.

“Strange to view from so high up, isn’t it,” coos a voice from behind him.

Tristin makes to whip around before remembering the condition of his body, though the stranger, in a courteous gesture, makes himself more obvious by approaching to Tristin’s right side. Two milk-white hands with long pristine nails straddle the stone railing as the man, too, looks out over the town.

“I’ve not been down there for ages,” the man seems to sigh. “The view must mean something much different for you.”

The questions brewing in his mind leaving him abruptly, all Tristin can do as he turns to face the bright-eyed, platinum-haired man is feel mortified. Surely this beautiful castle, perennial centerpiece of the town as it is, was too sacred for a man like Tristin to climb in the first place. And here before him was this gorgeous stranger, with a dewy shining face like a morning field, with twirling blonde locks tied in ribbons, billowy buttoned shirt tarped over a broad, spindly frame and cinching at the waist to meet pure night-black leggings, already playfully jabbing him for his intent.

“I’m so sorry for climbing your castle.” Each successive word fills Tristin with further embarrassment as it tumbles out of him.

The stranger lets out a boisterous laugh. “My castle!” Resting a palm under his jaw, the stranger turns to more formally address Tristin. “Truth told, I found the whole ordeal quite charming.” Tristin, for what he immediately assumes won’t be the last time, suppresses the feeling of blood rushing to his cheeks.

“I go by Gustave,” says the stranger, extending a hand. “And in any case, I should be the one apologizing. You took a really nasty spill off the side of the castle, it was much too sad to watch you bleeding out on those cold rocks.”

Tristin takes Gustave’s hand gingerly, startled by its chill. Far from clammy, the touch of his skin feels silky — Tristin gets the impression of grabbing a billowing sheer curtain in the night.

“T...Tristin.” he stammers. “I guess that all really happened then?” He takes a glance down the sheer castle wall drop, his stomach upending itself at the concept. Gustave, taking his hand back, points smilingly toward the various medical apparati attached to Tristin, one of which has found its double-use as a cane.

“I don’t quite know how I’m still alive. I suppose I should thank the medic who worked on me.” Tristin trails his fingers lightly up and down the metal gridwork of the device around his ribs. “Would it be possible to meet him?”

Gustave flashes another bemused smile. “You just have!”

An utterly alien and unrecognizable wave of emotion sweeps through Tristin. “Thank you,” he spits out mindlessly, bowing his head in a frenzied effort to hide his face. “I owe you my life.”

Gustave, looking for the first time befuddled, chirps, “That’s a convenient thing. I had thought about bringing you back dead, but that would have done no good for me.”

Tristin, still in a bow, straightens his back stiff as a board.

“The extra hands themselves would, of course, have been useful around the castle,” continues Gustave, “and it would have been much more practical to let you die. But to me, you were worth the effort.” In a quick, playful glance he mimics a surveying, sweeping glance over Tristin.

Uprighting himself, a much different feeling, a deepening anxiety, grips at Tristin’s stomach as the uncanniness of his situation bears down on him. “I don’t follow,” rings the nervous fire-like crackle of his throat.

Gustave lankily saunters across the tile deck, finding a seat on a rusted-over metal stool. “I suffer from an unseemly, troublesome condition,” he croons in lightly melodramatic aplomb, gently setting his hands over his crossed legs. “You see, Tristin, I am dead.”

In moments like these, when the hair at the nape of Tristin’s neck stands on end, he swears he can feel the force of a light bearing down on him like a blanket of hail, and here, too, he swears he can feel the moon at his back, a radiant force pushing at his shoulders. The rain and the wind disappear as Tristin looks deeply at this man who claims to be dead, whose eyes seem to have whites that stray into going black, whose pupils seem to make dreamlike swirls of the world around them.

“I knew I couldn’t simply leave you,” Gustave recalls, “certainly not in the hands of those townspeople, if they would have ever managed to find you before morning. In essence,” he leans forward, resting his elbows at his knees, “You died, and I gave you life.”

A sheepish smile creeping across Gustave’s face shows off the glint of a long fang. The world seems to drop out from under Tristin. His ever-twisting anxiety starts to compound with a dark curiosity.

Gustave’s eyes dart away as his hand reaches up to delicately cover his mouth, shifting his position in a sudden moment of apparent modesty. “Of course, due to the embarrassing nature of this condition, I am constantly in need of blood. It pains me to ask for any returns for my effort, but since you have offered your life, I feel inclined to ask.”

Gustave, leaping up, seems to soundlessly glide closer to Tristin. “I would like to see you healed and healthy. And then,” Gustave continues. “I would like permanent access to your blood.”

* * *

Moments splintering Tristin’s life away from its dutiful usual course seem, always, to crash like a sudden thunder, leaving the sound to reverberate in ringing ears. On the morning of losing his parents, he was helpless to stop repeating pangs of a time just before and just after. Here in the castle, he can narrowly feel his ears ringing as he obsessively recalls the night of the agreement in his head.

“As a vampire,” Gustave, now unmodest enough to use the word, had turned his back toward Tristin. “I need blood. I’d die without. And, like anything, differing blood carries a differing quality.”

The spot where Gustave prodded an extended finger into Tristin’s chest echoes with the sensation so vividly that Tristin feels an impulse to reach up and touch it. The vampire continued, “Yours is...how should I say it?” He fell silent to let the proper words conjure themselves, settling with: “Top grade.”

Tristin had been a churchgoer. Even as people fled his life, their traditions stayed, and he had found himself at home in the house of worship, afloat on the words of God. He felt God frequently, a guiding, enveloping hand seeping at the corners of his perception during moments of unquestionable goodness. He would be at a moment’s notice gripped by the sensation of purpose, with the routines of daily prayer and Sunday service having planted the seed in him of cosmic safety. There in front of Gustave he had felt the presence of God, those calm, warm hands blanketing at his back, a safety of the recognizable and invisibly familial. There on the tile clearing, overlooking blue lakes and mountains and yellow flickering homes, Tristin, the moment he had noticed this feeling, felt God leave him.

A week of delirious healing viscous mystery fluids being pumped into his bloodstream brought Tristin back on his feet, and now here he stands over an ornate kitchen sink, handwashing the finest dishes he has ever touched in a wide, dark kitchen lit by fireplace and candles, a sickening repetition of the week’s events spinning in his mind like a top. His mind would leap from the first night, to the night of being shown around the castle -- much of it in disrepair due to infrequent use -- to the experience of devouring cartoonishly giant plates of restorative meals cooked by Gustave, to the days of creeping out of the medical wing quarters to listen to Gustave’s silent office work, furious scribbling of words on parchment and folding of pages dotting the hours, punctuated by the clacking of his shoes up and down the lengths of the castle with armfuls of documents trailing in the wind of his stride. The weight of the tacit agreement to give blood put pressure on Tristin’s mind, but it was a bridge yet to be crossed.

Gently pawing the clean dishes into a stack in the cupboard, Tristin pauses to look around the kitchen, glancing over emptied fruitbowls and metalwork stuffed with pots and pans hanging from above. He tosses a look out of the kitchen into the long dining foyer, a single enormous table lined with carved white wooden chairs under a high, dusty ceiling. He knows that God is gone, maybe never to return, and he knows that he is home.

* * *

Val Val Val Val VAAAAAAAAL

I am so glad for this stupid inside joke that has spun out of control you have no idea. LISTEN they are legitimately cute OK, even though our versions of the characters are like…...way different. I actually had a lot of fun writing this and really want to keep going if we’re not both too busy lol!!!

It is SO WEIRD to think about going to the same college as you I mean it’s been like...how many years since we met?? I think they’re going to put me in killer classes but I haven’t gotten any info or a schedule or a syllabus yet so I guess I can’t be 100% sure. Maybe 99%. How often are we gonna hang out? Are we gonna be IN THE SAME DORM???? Probably not…. -_-

Your writing is soooo goooood also, the whole first part just felt super cool and effortless and I loved all of your descriptions so much. If there’s a main reason I want to keep going it’s so I can force you to WRITE MORE!! And yeah like you said it’ll be good to get the practice in before classes when we’ll be writing crap we don’t care about all the time

Anyway thanks for doing this with me and for being my frieeeeend :D I’m glad we’re back in regular contact now! I don’t get to say that often but here seemed like the right place.

Oh yeah, unrelated to anything but have your parents been acting weird? Mine keep acting like they’re losing their daughter or something, idk what it’s about because like...I am ALMOST 20 and moving out soon either way, eh maybe they’re just going through the motions of something. If they’re worried about me I’m not really sure why because like I know how to handle myself...¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

OK I’ll sign off here, this was fun!! Thank you for suggesting this I can’t wait to read whatever you write next!

\- Sam

P.S. mmmm sushis…………………..


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